The Law of Conservation of Energy
by Wowzaitsamanatee
Summary: After a horrible tragedy, Amy has to learn to accept it and move on. Rated T for character death


**I'm sorry about how dark it is, but I just really like writing angst. I think I'll probably write a more humorous one next.**

**The First Day • **_**destroyed **_

Amy remembered Mrs. Hicks physics class. Of course she did, since she was just as "try-hard" in that class as she was in every other class. That was her personality, her _thing_, because it had to be in the Santiago family. That was, until she joined the 99 and, not suddenly, but little by little her need to be liked decreased as her confidence increased. That being said, she still remembers every single agonizing, anxiety-filled second of high school, worried about grades, and her social life, and whether her classmates liked her, or her teachers. Her parents. The only thing that got her through it all was the actual classes. So that being said, of course Amy remembered Ms. Hicks physics class. She remembered how to find the kinetic and gravitational potential energy and that distance divided by time equals speed. But at this moment all she could think of was the law of conservation of energy.

_Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another._

_Destroyed._

He was energy.

An insane, rambling, out-of-control, annoying, loud, adorable, sweet, loving ball of energy that affected everyone around him. And energy can't be destroyed, right?

This is what was running through her mind as she stared at the pale corpse on the table in front of her. There was no energy in this body in front of her. No life.

_Energy can't be destroyed_

So where had he gone?

"Mrs. Peralta?"

The voice belonged to a woman with brown hair pulled in a low bun and pretty brown eyes. She looked kind, but her eyes were turned down, giving Amy a pitying look.

"I'm so sorry for your loss… I've… got his possessions here. It's what he had on him at the time." She held out a plastic bag that had varying items. On the top Amy could see his badge, on the long chain he so often wore around his neck.

She turned away, feeling resentment towards the pitying woman for no logical reason. She was just doing her job. And her job just happened to be handing Amy's husband's belongings to her after he had–

_Energy can't be destroyed_

No. He wasn't. He can't. It was against the rules. Rules were there for a reason. There had to be a mistake. Where they mixed up a goofy ball of energy with a blueing corpse. Somewhere in Amy's mind a voice said she was being illogical, but for right now this was all she had.

And she held onto it for dear life as she took the bag of belongings from the pitying lady and walked back out to the lobby.

**The First Week • **_**transformed**_

Amy sat at her desk staring at the stapler at the desk in front of her. His desk. His desk that after one unknowing uniformed officer had tried to move something off of it, and had been met with yells and glares from the rest of the squad, was in the exact same condition it had been before. Amy couldn't decide if that hurt more or less.

After picturing his cold body on that table every night for a week she had finally resolved that his body was dead. But that didn't change the rules she was clinging onto. She had moved on to the next possible solution.

_...it can only be transformed from one form to another._

If the energy that had once inhabited his body had left it, it would now have been transformed into something else. For a moment she wanted to look around the precinct as though a child with an adorable sense of humor and the softest eyes she had ever seen would come bouncing in through the door, ready to solve a crime. No one did. So there she sat staring at the absence of him.

She felt a hand on her back and turned around to see Rosa staring at his desk too.

Everyone said that she could stay home if she wanted to. She didn't. She didn't want to sit around all day in her cold and empty apartment. She wanted to be with her friends. All of the friends she had left.

**The First Month • **_**transferred **_

It had gotten better. Never good. Never really ok even. But better. Amy devoted all of her time into work, throwing herself into each case that came up. She could picture in her head his face lighting up when the captain announced some grisly murder or a perplexing robbery. It hurt. It hurt really bad. But it also was the closest she ever felt to him. Like he was still there, whispering to her. Like in this one case she had been working on for a few days now. A woman was found dead in her apartment, with a knife in her shoulder, and no one had heard from her by her friends and family in months. She was just about to label it a cold case when something dawned on her.

_It was the step mother, obviously. Come on Ames._

Her eyes teared up at the sound of his voice. Amy knew he wasn't there. She knew it. This was her grieving brain making up things. But at the same time she thought

_...or transferred from one form to another_

Maybe he was still here. In the air of the precinct he loved so much. His voice spoke again:

_She said she hadn't heard or seen from the vic in months, but she didn't seem surprised to see the victims new look._

The victim had gotten several piercings recently, all over her face.

_For a devout Christian woman, she didn't seem worried about all those holes. Title of your sex tape._

Amy smiled and wiped her eyes. It was of course in her head, but she wasn't ready to admit that.

**The First Year • **_**created**_

Slowly but surely, Amy had begun to hang out with people again. Oddly enough, Gina had become a real friend through all of this, often staying overnight with Amy while they talked about random stuff, like teenagers. Not that she had stopped making fun of Amy, as Gina assured that would never stop, but her banter was much more playful now, and less frequent. Charles was always willing to hang out with Amy, although it was always slightly awkward, and they both were always a little pulled back when they did. She went out for drinks with Terry and Rosa, and talked to Hitchcock and Scully in the break room. Sometimes her and Holt would just sit in his office for hours in comfortable silence, resting in the memories around them. It was sort of a domestic sadness, a pain that she was so used to that it began to dull.

And she had finally reached a conclusion on the law. The law of conservation of energy states that "_Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another."_

He… Jake was energy. A massive, chaotic swirl of energy that was never supposed to be here. Energy can't be destroyed, but it also can't just be created. Jake was the human form of energy that broke every rule. He spun around like the tornado he was giving off a little bit of energy, a little light to each person he touched, until his work was done on this planet he was too good for. So whatever deity of the universe there is took him back to the heavens.

Amy knew this was ridiculous. That she was making up some inane story to help her cope with Jake's death. But after she had concluded all this there was a sort of warmth to her cold apartment that she hadn't felt since she shared it with an insane, rambling, out-of-control, annoying, loud, adorable, sweet, loving ball of energy.

**Thanks for reading! Please leave reviews if you have any critiques or questions.**


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